Dumontis

Building Autonomy in Continual Improvement

PDSA

Isn’t it just fantastic what we people have managed to do in the field of measurement and control technology. The nicest gadgets ensure our production equipment and processes remain in control. Nothing can halt technology, so it seems. And who knows what the Internet of Things (IoT) will have in store for all of us in the future. A future that most probably is nearer than we think.

But let’s stay somewhat closer to home for now. What about all these business processes that aren’t fully mechanized or automated? How do we keep those in control? What can we learn from trying to apply the concepts of measurement and control technology to these type of processes?(more…)

In Lean Thinking, standardization is often seen as a condition for continual improvement. In particularly, standards are seen as the means to be able to detect problems. But that is not the only role standards play. Standards are also important in actually eliminating problems in a structured, methodical way. A role that is often overlooked in popular problem- solving methods typically in use in companies. A short blog post about the 3 As of problem-solving: availability, adherence and adequacy.(more…)

Companies don’t really distinguish themselves as far as it concerns the objectives for their operations. Providing quality, on time, in a speedy way, against low cost, and on a safe, healthy, pleasant and environment-friendly way is something everyone aspires. An operational competitive advantage, however, will only emerge when the way in which the organization executes her processes, is smarter and better than the way in which her competitors does. But nowadays, every self-respecting company seemingly is also pursuing “Lean”. Have we finished competing through our operations? A post about “what”, “how” and “how well”.(more…)

Nu.nl (the most popular Dutch news site) heads: “Warmest October 22nd ever”. At the same time, the comments speak about the insignificance of the headline as the 23rd of October 2003, for instance, the Netherlands saw a record cold temperature and we had snow. Is something really going on now as suggested by the heading, or is this just ballyhoo? Of course you also see this happening in organizations. We proudly announce something has been significantly improved but if we look closer, we see that the data that is being compared has been picked very selectively. Or after a few weeks or months, it turns out that the so-called improvements were apparently not so sustainable. Most companies lack the basic competency of interpreting data it seems.(more…)

The good ol’ Plan, Do, Check and Act (PDCA), who hasn’t heard about it? A managerial concept as old as the road to Methusalem it seems. We make a plan, we execute the plan, during the execution we keep a close eye on the ball and of course we take corrective action when things do not go according to the plan. Easy! When teams start improvement initiatives it seems as if immediately we are flooded by action lists, Gantt charts and project meetings. But is it really that easy? In fact, when taking a closer look and with a Lean eye, the plan in fact comprises two plans: the plan as a hypothesis and the plan as the actions to be taken to implement and evaluate the hypothesis; the plan within the plan as it were. “I beg your pardon?”(more…)

Building upon the earlier posts about autonomy en PDSA, I automatically tumble upon a well-known, but often — during the Study phase of PDSA — ineffectively used technique: 5x why? A technique that has to prevent that a team jumps to conclusions too early and that leads to a productive and structural solution to the problem by means of a more thorough problem and root cause analysis. But it takes more than just asking five times “why?” to the team…(more…)

Continual improvement according to the PDSA cycle brings scientific thinking to the team level. In my earlier blog post I have highlighted the importance of autonomy for continual improvement. Most important conclusion there was that a team should have the right competencies and skill levels to be able to be truly responsible for their work and the improvement thereof. But to be an autonomous team, more comes into play. True autonomy also implies that the PDSA cycle — in most cases — can be fully completed within and by the team. And this is where I see many issues. In many cases, the PDSA cycle seems to be broken…(more…)